Pt. 2, Or How While Hanging Out at Krispy Kreme with Michael Dequina, Jeff and James Chen Talking ‘Bout Bunnies Having Sex in the Pool and Savaging the Legend of QT, I Portend the End of Pax Americana
Taking a break from taking a break from it all, I slipped away from The House the Mouse Built to spend some time with fellow cinephiles and all around good guys Michael Dequina, Jeff and James Chen. We ended up taking a walk around The Block, a bustling SoCal mall-plex that looks like it does more business in a day than Estonia does in a fiscal year, before settling in for dinner at a must be seen to be believed video arcade/restaurant hybrid called Dave and Buster's. It’ll come as little surprise that talk centred on movie-related matters, with Michael Dequina’s lascivious tales of Hollywood debauchery (Kill Bill Vol. 2 party at Hef’s Playboy mansion highlighted by bunnies making out in the pool) and his elaborate deconstruction of the Mythology of Tarantino (If you ever have the pleasure to meet him, you MUST get Michael to do his QT impersonation for you. It kills) proving to be highlight material, but what struck me during our chat was that these three gentlemen, whose displays of gentility (never once raised their voices) moderation (they all practiced the sorta portion control that seems downright un-American, given the general and impressively steroidal massiveness of the meals restaurants serve you down here) and temperance (all three gents had coca colas with dinner) I continue to admire and respect, were so different from the larger than life Americans I had observed during the rest of my visit.
Y’see, Americans sure do appear to love livin’ large. As a people, you are big, loud and cocky, and you move through space with the assured air of them that owns it. And why not, given that you take up so much of it. Simply put, you are also a physically imposing people. I spent a lot of time here admiring the massive physiques of the folks here who must all be on the same sorta growth hormones that professional athletes spend really good money to avoid usage-detection. I have never seen so many Big People in such a relatively Small Space (I say this not out of malice or condescension, but as a Canadian who recognizes and takes no solace in the fact that we North of 49ers are mostly merely pale imitations of y’all, btw.)
All of this was really driven home to me during our evening-ending sojourn to the world famous Krispy Kreme donut shop. Witnessing the assembly line delivery of product through the steamed- glass windows of the shop (blame all of our heavy-breathing) I came to see that the orgasmic Krispy Kreme donuts are the equivalent of the lead Romans used to flavour their wine. That’s right, we are witnessing the downfall of the Pax Americana Empire brought about by bad nutrition. Not only does the food you eat make y’all larger than some housing complexes in Hong Kong, so that the literally larger than life Americans make better targets for them that hates ‘em, but shit, man, how can y’all be expected to care about what’s happening in the World Out There when you’ve got Krispy Kreme donuts to eat and Playboy bunnies having sex in the pool to watch? Isn’t it a truism that if you wanna be master of the known universe, you’ve gotta at some level Stay Hungry? Cuz you know, once you get Large ‘n Lazy, it’s only a matter of time before some industrious little bastard is gonna sneak right on past you to the front of the queue.
Friday, May 07, 2004
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Waylaid at Wally’s World Wherein I Learn, Among Many Other Sobering Truths, That My Ten Year-Old Daughter Has More Jam Than Her Old Man.
The world seems to be divided up into two types of people: Those that wanna soar with the eagles, and the rest of us, whom I like to refer to as "The Sane." I’m a feet-on-the-solid-ground kind of guy, so the whole concept of boarding a mechanical beast that weighs several tons that will somehow, and against all logic, transport me through the air to a Foreign Country, which thankfully speaks in a quaint dialect that closely resembles my native English tongue just enough that I managed to communicate in a rudimentary fashion at least enough to do typical tourist stuff-- asking directions, ordering cerveza, identifying potential terrorists-- where I will be axed to endure a series of knee-knocking hair-raising spine-jarring rides (damn, those Tea Cups spin fast!) all in the name of Good Old Fashioned Family Fun!
So, it turns out that those metal beasts actually can, and with comparative ease, sustain flight for relatively long and uneventful periods of time, which is to say, we all got to L.A. intact, so having proven my resolve, it was only a matter of time before my Nerves of Steel were going to be once again put to the test and ultimately shown to be wanting, particularly when matched up to those of my elder (and apparently cyborgian) offspring. Long story short, unlike her sad sack dad, my ten year-old daughter walked the walk and talked the talk. She rode ALL the rides, from Splash Mountain to The Screamer, Mulholland Madness to The Tower of Terror, with seeming stoic indifference, breaking her mime-like routine just long enough to cackle mercilessly at my school-girl shrieks renting the air around us. Perhaps her stoicism is a charade, and inside she’s a quivering puddle of fear, but I suspect this more closely resembles the Inner Me. Perhaps, and more likely, it is that she is immune from the Horror due to the tenderness of youth. Unlike her Pops, who must on a daily basis as a condition of his ever-advancing mortality look deep down into the yawning Maw of Death, my dear daughter is immune from such concerns and so, with a casual scorn that would be inspirational if it weren’t so dispiriting, wins every stare down with Death’s Dominion.
I understand the theory behind the attraction of these rides, which is that we live in an age when such visceral thrills are few and far between (it is not often anymore that we must ward off the attack of a hungry leopard, though my annual physicals are beginning to resemble a medieval Trial By Ordeal) so we in the Developed World who don’t find navigating rush hour traffic hormonally stimulating enough are increasingly physiologically starved for the thrill of the adrenaline rush. In my head, this all makes sense. Still and all, in my gut I KNOW that this is nuts. Why do we crave that which we have worked so hard for so long to protect ourselves from? Didn’t we hack down the wilderness and replace it with massive and intricately designed cities so’s we could escape the daily trauma of life-near-death and replace it with big warm houses, comfortable clothes and Tivo? Seeing all this, would Neanderthal man, if suddenly transported forward 30,000 years, ask to go BACK to his old life? Would he willingly board a several-times-heavier-than-air machine in order to indulge in a weeklong near-death binge known as the Modern Theme Park?
I don’t think so. Which, in my mind, gives Neanderthal Man a leg up on Homo Sapiens Version 1.0.
Next Up: How While Hanging Out at Krispy Kreme with Michael Dequina, Jeff and James Chen Talking ‘Bout Bunnies Having Sex in the Pool and QTs Telephone Machine Messages, I Portend the End of Pax Americana
The world seems to be divided up into two types of people: Those that wanna soar with the eagles, and the rest of us, whom I like to refer to as "The Sane." I’m a feet-on-the-solid-ground kind of guy, so the whole concept of boarding a mechanical beast that weighs several tons that will somehow, and against all logic, transport me through the air to a Foreign Country, which thankfully speaks in a quaint dialect that closely resembles my native English tongue just enough that I managed to communicate in a rudimentary fashion at least enough to do typical tourist stuff-- asking directions, ordering cerveza, identifying potential terrorists-- where I will be axed to endure a series of knee-knocking hair-raising spine-jarring rides (damn, those Tea Cups spin fast!) all in the name of Good Old Fashioned Family Fun!
So, it turns out that those metal beasts actually can, and with comparative ease, sustain flight for relatively long and uneventful periods of time, which is to say, we all got to L.A. intact, so having proven my resolve, it was only a matter of time before my Nerves of Steel were going to be once again put to the test and ultimately shown to be wanting, particularly when matched up to those of my elder (and apparently cyborgian) offspring. Long story short, unlike her sad sack dad, my ten year-old daughter walked the walk and talked the talk. She rode ALL the rides, from Splash Mountain to The Screamer, Mulholland Madness to The Tower of Terror, with seeming stoic indifference, breaking her mime-like routine just long enough to cackle mercilessly at my school-girl shrieks renting the air around us. Perhaps her stoicism is a charade, and inside she’s a quivering puddle of fear, but I suspect this more closely resembles the Inner Me. Perhaps, and more likely, it is that she is immune from the Horror due to the tenderness of youth. Unlike her Pops, who must on a daily basis as a condition of his ever-advancing mortality look deep down into the yawning Maw of Death, my dear daughter is immune from such concerns and so, with a casual scorn that would be inspirational if it weren’t so dispiriting, wins every stare down with Death’s Dominion.
I understand the theory behind the attraction of these rides, which is that we live in an age when such visceral thrills are few and far between (it is not often anymore that we must ward off the attack of a hungry leopard, though my annual physicals are beginning to resemble a medieval Trial By Ordeal) so we in the Developed World who don’t find navigating rush hour traffic hormonally stimulating enough are increasingly physiologically starved for the thrill of the adrenaline rush. In my head, this all makes sense. Still and all, in my gut I KNOW that this is nuts. Why do we crave that which we have worked so hard for so long to protect ourselves from? Didn’t we hack down the wilderness and replace it with massive and intricately designed cities so’s we could escape the daily trauma of life-near-death and replace it with big warm houses, comfortable clothes and Tivo? Seeing all this, would Neanderthal man, if suddenly transported forward 30,000 years, ask to go BACK to his old life? Would he willingly board a several-times-heavier-than-air machine in order to indulge in a weeklong near-death binge known as the Modern Theme Park?
I don’t think so. Which, in my mind, gives Neanderthal Man a leg up on Homo Sapiens Version 1.0.
Next Up: How While Hanging Out at Krispy Kreme with Michael Dequina, Jeff and James Chen Talking ‘Bout Bunnies Having Sex in the Pool and QTs Telephone Machine Messages, I Portend the End of Pax Americana
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